AllFreeNovel
Share Us
She turned back to the sled, grabbed the tarp, and unhooked it from the sides. Then she placed it, wet side down, over the snow in the vestibule of the tent. With Peter’s help, she dragged the two bags off the sled and into the vestibule. She packed them against the side of the fly to stop the wind, then she untied Sencha and led her into the vestibule. Peter, already inside the tent, stopped unrolling his sleeping bag.
“What are you doing?”
“She has to stay in here or she’ll freeze,” said Hannah.
“She can’t come into the tent.” He was unwrapping one of the energy bars and the idea of food caused Hannah’s stomach to clench, hard, into her spine almost. She closed her hands into fists until the spasm passed. She hadn’t brought any extra blankets, and she’d also forgotten a headlamp. There was a flashlight in the emergency kit, but it was impossible to hold things and do things at the same time.
How would she keep Sencha warm? She groped through the darkness to find her clothing bag, thinking to wrap the Dalmatian in more of her clothes, but then she had an idea: she unzipped the bag and turned it sideways so that Sencha could burrow into it just like she did in Hannah’s parents’ big bed at home. She coaxed Sencha into the bag of clothes and laid the big woollen sweater over her. It was wet, but not all the way through, and still, it was warm.
Hannah was too tired to eat. She could barely keep her eyes open. The last thing she remembered was struggling to get out of her boots and into her sleeping bag, scrunching her hat down over her head so that it covered her ears, and noticing that there was no difference between the darkness inside her sleeping bag and the darkness of the night.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Hannah dreamt she was running, running like the sled dogs, long and easy and full of light, effortless wind. They ran across the greenness of a meadow, and each smell was a tug on her senses: the sharp tang of grass and pine needles, the small, anxious mice and moles hidden at her feet. Then it changed, and the ground became uneven under her feet; instead of springy turf, there were rocks, and she realized she was barefoot, running through raspberry bushes in shorts, and the sharp, spiny bushes scratched and poked her legs until they felt like they were on fire.
She awoke with her legs in agony. Peter was shaking her shoulder.
“Hannah, Hannah. Are you okay?”
“My legs,” she gasped, and moaned again, drawing her legs up to her torso and wrapping her arms around them. The grey light of day filtered through the tent. The bush was silent — so silent, Hannah thought through the pain, that it must be snowing again.
Peter looked around the tent and grabbed the water bottle Hannah had put near her head. He shook it, and the water inside sloshed only a little.
“It’s full,” he said.
“So?” she groaned.
“You need to drink water, Hannah,” he replied, uncapping the bottle. “I didn’t see you drink anything yesterday. Here.”
She took the bottle, put it to her lips, and drank. Immediately, her belly started to rebel; she barely held back from barfing up all the water onto Peter’s blue wool pants. She waited for the nausea to pass, then drank a bit more. Her stomach was on fire as well as her legs, and her headache had come back sometime in the night. She lay in her sleeping bag, exhausted, floating in and out, with Peter haranguing her to drink until she fell asleep again with a belly more or less full of water.
“Cidiot,” she heard him mutter as she drifted off.
When she awoke, the first thing she saw was Sencha’s anxious face. The flap of the vestibule was pulled back, and looking past the Dalmatian’s brown and white face, Hannah could see it was snowing. Her cheeks were cold and her whole body ached, but her mind was a little clearer. She was loath to move, as her thick winter sleeping bag filled with goose down had a hood that flipped over her head. That was good, because sometime during the night her toque had slipped off.
Seeing Hannah’s eyes open, Sencha begin to whine. Hannah heard crunching sounds, then Peter’s body blocked the vestibule opening as he crouched down.
“What time is it?” he asked. No good morning or greeting of any kind. He had his hood pulled up over his toque, and there was a layer of snow on it. One side of his glasses was fogged.
Hannah dragged her hand out of its nice warm spot by her belly and looked at her watch. Her heart jumped.
“Eleven o’clock.”
“Are you up yet?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, let’s go.”
He stood and crunched back out of sight. Hannah struggled with the zipper of her sleeping bag, then wormed her way out. She tugged on her boots and jacket, shivering in the steep temperature difference. Sencha pushed past her and burrowed right into the vacant sleeping bag. Hannah reached over and touched the dog’s nose. It was cold, which was good; it meant Sencha did not have a fever. Still, the Dal was taking any opportunity she could to be warm, so before leaving the tent, Hannah pulled the top of the sleeping bag over Sencha so that only her brown nose poked out.
Peter was in the same position he’d been in last night while she was erecting the tent, but now he squatted before a small, cheerful fire. On one side of the fire was one of the brand-new cooking pots from the supply packsack. The orange enamel was already soot-blackened, and there was something bubbling in it. Hannah’s stomach lurched. She was still exhausted and working through her dehydration, so she couldn’t tell whether the stomach lurch was good or bad. On the other side of the fire was a pot full of snow he was melting to make water.
The dogs were miserable. Although Bogey’s tail wagged, he did not get up from his spot, where he was curled up under the brushbow of the sled with his butt almost touching Rudy’s. There was a dusting of snow on all the dogs, and when Nook lifted her head in Hannah’s direction, small shards of ice came off her ruff and landed at her feet. Still, her eyes and face were calm.
“Did you feed them?” she asked Peter.
“No.” He was stirring the stew pot. He had pulled the supply bag right out of the vestibule and dragged it close to him — and farther from the dogs, she guessed. It was still open and snow was drifting into it, but she was too tired to say anything.
